Loup trails off immediately, smirking shyly as he realizes he overplayed his hand.

“Yeah, to be honest with you I don’t know too much,” he says, laughing. “But as long as Gibby knows, we’ll be alright.”

That was the answer the Star got throughout the Jays’ clubhouse on Thursday before the team travelled to nearby Clearwater to take on the Philadelphia Phillies.

“The only thing I know is that you get two challenges,” said Jose Reyes.

Well, not quite.

Brandon Morrow thought he had the right idea.

“You get one, what is it, before the eighth and one after the eighth?”

Close, but wrong again.

Sergio Santos was shameless about his ignorance.

“I don’t know anything about it at all,” he said. “Nothing.”

See below for a fuller breakdown, but basically the rules for expanded replay are as follows: each manager starts the game with one challenge. If he uses it successfully, he gets another. But he doesn’t get a third.

If he’s wrong with his first challenge — “then he gets ejected?” Morrow jokingly interjects — he doesn’t get another.

But there’s another wrinkle: From the seventh inning onward, if the manager has exhausted his challenges, the umpire can still decide to review a play at his discretion. But only if the manager doesn’t have any of his own challenges left.

“I didn’t know that,” said Reyes. “Well, as long as Gibby knows. He’s the one who has to know.”

Does he know?

“Yeah, I know,” he said, laughing.

Gibbons said a bigger concern is asking to have a play reviewed and having it go against him in a way he didn’t expect. While managers have to specify what they want reviewed, umpires can overturn any aspect of the preceding play.

Reyes said the key for him is to tell Gibbons as quickly as possible if he knows he’s safe and the ump calls him out.

“You have to make sure to tell him, ‘Oh man, I was safe.’ You can’t be in-between.”

Gibbons said he plans to instruct his players to signal the bench to let him know if they think he should use a challenge.

“At least give us an idea,” he said.

But there will be no NFL-style challenge flags. A manager initiates a replay challenge by “verbally indicating his intention to challenge, in a timely manner, to the Crew Chief,” according to a press release announcing the new rules.

The league has yet to define what they consider to be “a timely manner.”

Like his teammates, Dustin McGowan has no idea what the rules are, but he’s more concerned about whether replay will slow down the game. McGowan said he’s a baseball traditionalist and would have preferred to retain the umpire’s eye, however imperfect.

“They’re going to get some wrong, they’re going to get some right, but that’s part of it for me,” he said. “That’s the way it’s been played for 100 years.”

Loup also hopes it doesn’t slow down the game, but he figures there’ll be times when it comes in handy.

“As soon as you need it and it goes your way you’re going to be like, ‘Damn, I’m really glad I had that replay,’ ” he said. “I think it’s going to be a good thing over time.”

Here are the basic rules for MLB’s expanded instant replay:

1. Each manager starts the game with one challenge. If he uses the challenge successfully, he gets a second challenge. There is no third challenge.

2. Managers can use their challenges at any point in the game, but if they have exhausted their challenges, umpires can still use their discretion to review a play, but only from the seventh inning onward. Umpires will also continue to use their discretion to review home runs at any point in the game.

3. Nearly every play is reviewable, except for balls and strikes, interference and obstruction, check swings, infield flies and the specific fair/foul call when the contention is whether or not the ball crossed first or third base in the air.

4. Each team will have access to the same video feeds as the replay official and a member of the team’s video staff will be able to communicate his opinion of a call to the team’s dugout via two-way phone.

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